Well the bushes eventually arrived, was promised them for last Saturday so they turn up the Wednesday after
, and am sorry to say that I am not impressed. Firstly my order was for Yellow bushes with Stainless ferrules, tubes, spacers, it seems these were the problem. Don't know why people seem afraid of machining stainless but they are
looking at the tube ends it appears that the tooling was blunt the finish is like a ploughed field and rough as a badgers backside. The finish in the bores is also not good and in the days of carbide U drills it seems these were done with a good old twist drill which wandered. I had to skim the ends on one tie rod eye bush to get it into the bracket on the subframe so chucked in the the small lathe and the hole is not concentric with the tubes outside ................................. Hmmmmm
A tie rod eye bush ................................................. remember these are YELLOW!!!!! the chap at Durflex assures me that these are Yellow despite their own web site showing they are Orange as the Yellow IS yellow on their web page.
Not the poor finish to the tubes end
..................................................... Now these are the complaince bushes:-
Hmmm they don't look like any other complaince bush that I have seen on an F ???????????????? For compaision these are Polybush ones:-
that I fitted to "Elsie" for her MOT last September.
The tubes are one piece that passes through both bushes unlike the Duraflex which have short tubes through each bush. I am wondering if they have trrouble drilling through a length of Stainless the required length?????
if so this calls the skill of their machinist and their choice of tooling into question. Simple tube spacers like this would be 2nd year apperentice work and can be achieved on a centre lathe. Using a capstan would make the job even easier and with modern CNC machines a doddle and yes I have many years experience running and setting such machines. Now these are the Duraflex bushes fitted:-
I was worried that the tie bar nut would not have enough thread to grip on but it seems one has to wind the nut on and squish the Duraflexs Complaince Bushes
I am also wondering about the lower arm to hub bush as on the standard one the steelof the arm is against the hub but the Duraflex bush is squashed between arm and hub ????? now I simply so not have enough knowledge about polymers and polyurathene to make an informed judgement here so it's a "suck it and see" scenerio
.
A tie rod with standard MG-Rover bush:-
That one was painted over a year ago and has lain out on the old steel saw bench since then.
The standard bush is a right Mare to remove and I found the only way with no proper press as to tear the rubber out by shearing it under pressure in the 6" bench vice, used a large deep socket and a smaller one to shear the rubber bush through, then cutting the steel ring with a hack saw before punching the split ring out with a cold chisel the Duraflex bush being in two halves was easy to fit the tube is one piece but of course is fairly short:-
Once the old bush was out the tie rod was cleaned off and primed:-
then painted Yellow to match the rest.
Of all the Duraflex bushes that I have these are the ones I would buy again as they do stiffen up the the tie rod and stop it twisting which I am hoping is a good thing! I also don't know of others offering a replacement bush for this!!!!
The lower radius arm inner bush is again very thick and it proved very difficult to get the shims in place:-
The O/S went in a bit easier and further. Anyway apart from rear shocks the rear suspension is back together. The dampers on her were no good due to poor condition so have to get replacements as NONE of the ones here are in good enough condition to use
and the money has run out. The new TRW rear discs did arrive though:-
so got cleaned and titivated ................................. they are only fitted for the photo as the edge/rim is not painted and have not bought the new bolts for the caliper carrier mounting to the hub as yet along with the new bleed nipples.
Another job completed on her was the swapping of the ingition switch so she now has the full lock set from the Donor VVC fitted so she has two keys just have to sort out a second key fob as we still only have the one of those. The Donors boot lock has this cover:-
so that was swapped over too